During her presentation at the White House COVID-19 briefing on Saturday, Dr. Deborah Birx was cruising along until she waded into one of President Donald Trump and the GOP’s sorest spots: the Chinese government’s apparent undercounting of coronavirus casualties. As Birx, the White House’s coronavirus coordinator, explained a slide showing COVID-19 deaths per capita for various countries, China’s was marked with an asterisk at the very bottom.
Trump, standing on the sidelines, couldn’t help but interject. “Excuse me, does anybody really believe this number?” he said, interrupting an apparently startled Birx—who then wheeled around, smiled, and coolly explained she put China’s number on the chart to demonstrate “how unrealistic this could be.”
Though Birx tried to move on, Trump still couldn’t keep quiet. He soon interrupted her again, to make a similar point, this time on the numbers shown for Iran.
